ALOD: Battle Badgers Don't Care

The Badger Mark II (Industrialus caldariae) is a curious creature, possessing neither the agility of the Sigil or Iteron Mark IV, nor the cargo capacity and low slots of the Bestower, Mammoth, or Iteron Mark II/Mark V; it is thoroughly outclassed in the field of hauling. Like all industrials, it has one turret slot, but the Badger also possesses six mid slots, the most of any industrial. This allows the Badger II to fit a surprisingly stiff tank or tackle gear. And thus the fierce “Battle Badger” was born. Among its weapons are fear, surprise, warp scramblers, and light neutron blaster IIs. The Battle Badger found many applications in EVE, from scooping miner cans to comedy fleets (Test Alliance is especially fond of Battle Badgers), or as in this case, to preying on its favorite target, stupid carebears.

Yes, that is a Tempest Fleet Issue (TFI) falling to a single Battle Badger. But let us focus on that fit for a moment. While artillery cannons are power-intensive weapons, and some artillery ships might require a reactor control unit to fit them, especially if the pilot is low skilled, there is absolutely no reason to fit three reactor control units. A starting character will still have 6000 units of power grid left over on that fit. A whopping six slots on the ship are left empty, nine if counting the useless RCUs. One would figure that, on a hull costing 350 million, the pilot would, you know, use every slot. The only thing right about this fit is that the guns and MWD are the proper size, and the rigs and damage mod are indeed projectile mods. There is no way you could fit a ship worse than this if you tried.

Oh wait… Yep, it’s the same exact pilot losing a Maelstrom, except this kill happened three years ago. While there can be some debate about which fit is worse (this fit at least uses every slot and has cap rigs for the shield booster), what is apparent is that in three years of playing EVE, yrman has not learned a single thing about how to fit ships, or where to make ISK. The NPC on the killmail is a belt rat, meaning yrman was belt ratting with that fit.

When contacted, Rorey Preldent, the Badger pilot, had this to say (edited for readability)

“I was roaming about looking for ships I can bait with the Badger. I was going through systems, scanning for anoms. I saw the TFI on the D-scan and prayed for it to be in this one anom in the system and he was! I approached him and he was just tractor beaming wrecks to him. So I got my orbit of 500 m and looted one of his wrecks becoming flashy. I then convoed him and started to taunt him and so on. But he only spoke Russian so I opened Google translator and spoke to him through that. He wasn’t having any of it, so I started to spam duel him when he was looting. He declined a few times but then he suddenly accepted. He may have miskicked [sic] or something. So i scrammed + webbed him and opened fire. He launched 5 Vespa I's at me so I killed them with a 40 second lock time. The badger can lock a max of two targets at a time so I had to keep him locked up to keep up the scram. It took 60 seconds to kill one drone. He had 10 Vespa’s but they weren’t a problem as I had 2 small armor reps. It took me 1hour 30mins and 1900 shots of void to kill him. “

To break down the chain of events:

Rorey roamed around high-sec looking for mission runners to bait.

He discovered this Tempest Fleet Issue inside a high-sec anomaly. The Tempest was sitting at 50 km, blapping the frigates as they spawned.

The Battle Badger cruised to a 500 m orbit and stole some loot. The Tempest did not aggress.

The Badger badgered the Tempest with duel requests, most being rejected. The Tempest pilot did not “block all duels” and accidentally accepted one.

The Tempest suddenly accepted and spent the next hour and a half slowly dying to the Battle Badger’s one light neutron blaster.